Sea Glass Bottle
by rubyshards
Summary: SeiferxSquall. Orphanage fic. Seifer and Squall find a glass bottle by the orphanage. For the themes 'fear,' 'finder's keepers,' 'left alone,' and 'unsent letters.'


"What did ya find this time?" Squall is kneeling on the top of the rocks, looking down toward Seifer with a curious gleam lighting up his face and a smile on his lips. The wind is stronger today than it has been in a long time, and Squall's hair whips around his face when he leans over the side, to see where Seifer has climbed to, but he doesn't care to push it back. He's afraid that he might fall if he lifts his hands to do it – the rocks can be dangerous up here during the windy times. He'd know – Seifer's fallen before, and broke his arm, and had to be in bed for a long time for it to heal. Squall didn't want to come back out here – he's still afraid Seifer might fall again, or he might fall this time – but Seifer insisted on it, and when Seifer decides something, there's no changing his mind.

Squall came along to make sure nothing bad happened to Seifer this time.

"I can't reach it yet!" Seifer's voice is hard to hear over the wind, and Squall has to pay real close attention to catch what he says. He frowns, and leans over the edge a little bit more, and tries to see Seifer below him. The wind pushes a clump of dark-brown hair in his eyes, though, and he can't see through it, but he's still too scared to move it away, so he tries to shake his head to get it out of the way instead.

The action makes him kind of dizzy, so he stops that, too. He doesn't want to fall, like Seifer did.

"Be careful, 'kay! Matron'll be mad if one of us gets hurt!" Seifer yells a little grunt of agreement, and Squall knows he doesn't really care if Matron gets mad, because he never really cares. Squall does, though, and he doesn't want to make Matron mad, like they did the last time they were out here, but he doesn't want to make Seifer mad by leaving, either. So he stays where he's at, and watches from the edge to see if Seifer can reach the thing he's looking for, and shakes his hair a little lighter than last time, trying to get it out of his face.

They're out here because Seifer said he could see something shiny on the rocks over here. Squall said he couldn't see anything, but Seifer swore there was something here, so he followed him, 'cause he didn't want Seifer to go alone. He was scared last time Seifer got hurt here, and he knows Seifer was scared, too. He doesn't want Seifer to have to be alone if it _does _happen again, although he'd prefer if it didn't – Seifer had been kind of annoying when he broke his arm, even if he was injured, always giving orders and making Zell get everything for him. Matron had scolded him for it, though, but it was still a pain, and Squall would rather not deal with that again.

"I think I found it!" Seifer sounds excited, even from the distance he's climbed down to, and Squall frowns because Seifer's voice sounds so far away. He's worried Seifer might get hurt if he wanders too far.

He shakes his hair out of his face again, and looks over the edge, where he can see Seifer climbing his way back toward the top, a tiny, shimmering object slipped into the front pocket of his ratty, mud-splattered jeans. Squall is a little surprised that there really was something there, but he's more relieved that Seifer made it back alright, and he grins a little and helps Seifer climb the rest of the way up by grabbing onto his arm and pulling him back. They fall onto the ground, kind of hard, with a soft groan from both of them, because Squall was pulling too hard and Seifer wasn't helping all that much, but they don't yell at each other, like they normally would. Seifer's taken the glittering object out of his pocket, and is holding it up to the sunlight, watching it and examining it, his mouth pulled into a little "o" shape.

"It's a bottle." Seifer rolls his eyes, and brings it back down, flipping it between his hands and squinting at it, like it's some great treasure.

"Yeah, I know that! Wonder what's in it?" Squall shrugs, and holds out his hand, wanting to get a look at it for himself. Seifer frowns at him for a moment, and keeps it close to his chest. "You better not drop it 'n break it, Squally. Understand?" Seifer demands, and Squall frowns, and sighs, knowing Seifer's just being a jerk about it because he's the one who climbed down to get it in the first place. He nods, and Seifer looks him in the eye for a minute, as if to make sure he has his word, before he hands the bottle over to Squall.

The glass is warmed from the sunlight, heavy and hot in Squall's little palms, and he turns it around and around, watching the reflection of sea-green as the colored glass from the bottle catches the light and spills onto the ground, a lovely painting of deep jade. Squall kind of wants to go in and get the finger paints that Selphie likes to play with, to see if he can paint that color, but he knows Seifer's not going to let him go now, because they still don't know what's inside, so he tries hard to remember that color, and decides to do it later, when it gets dark out.

Inside of the bottle, Squall can see a dark spot in the middle, like there's something coiled up and shoved inside. Flipping the bottle upright, he can see that there's an old cork keeping the bottle closed, and he digs at it with his fingernail for a minute, trying to get it open. The edges are old and worn, like it's been almost opened several times, and he can't get a good hold of it; he frowns, and glares at the bottle, holding it up for Seifer to see.

"I think there's somethin' inside. Like a piece of paper or a letter or somethin'." Seifer's face lights up at this, and he reaches over, snatching the bottle from Squall's grasp to examine the dark blur and the cork. Squall pouts when Seifer takes it, but he doesn't try to get it back, because he doesn't want to fight over it while they're up here – they might drop it, and then they'd have to climb down and get it all over again, or it might break.

After a minute, Seifer seems to come to the same conclusion Squall did, because his face lights up and he starts looking around, like he's trying to find some way to get it open. Leaning over, Seifer picks up a small rock from the pile they're on, and puts the bottle on the ground, looking up at Squall for a moment.

"I'm gonna try to break the top off, 'kay? Then we can see what's inside." Squall doesn't like that idea that much, because he doesn't want to get cut when Seifer does it, and he doesn't want Seifer to cut himself, either.

"Only if you're careful." Squall says, and Seifer rolls his eyes again, in that typical way of his, when he thinks he's right about everything, and Squall pouts, and scoots back on the rock, scraping his bare knees on the stone when he does so. He doesn't really care, though, because he'd rather have scraped knees than get hit by a piece of the bottle when Seifer breaks it, and he flinches when Seifer turns his head away and hits at the bottle with a loud _crack_.

"There!" Squall turns back to see Seifer holding the two parts of the bottle, and he grins at Squall, triumphant, because he didn't hurt himself. Squall is a little sad to see the bottle broken, because it was so much prettier than any piece of paper he's ever seen, but he's too curious to see what's no the dark brown paper Seifer's pulling out to really care about a broken bottle now.

"What's on it?" Seifer's face scrunches up as he tries to read what's on the paper, and Squall leans close, careful not to put his hands in the glass shards that are littering the rock, to get a better look at what the paper says.

"It's some old letter someone never sent to their girlfriend or somethin'. I dunno, I can't read it. S'all smeared and stuff. Jus' says 'to my love' on it." Seifer makes a little gagging noise, and Squall's nose curls up, because he's always thought that kind of thing was really dumb, and he's never understood what all of the fuss with 'love' and stuff was about – Quistis, Selphie and Irvine are the ones who care, always talking about how they can't wait to fall in love, or share their first kiss, or go on their first date (Squall thinks it's gross).

"Mebbe we should give it to Selphie. She'd like it." Seifer shakes his head, and tosses the piece of paper over his shoulder. Squall wants to reach out and grab it, because, if Selphie didn't want it, he was thinking about adding it to the shoe-box collection him and Sis started the other day, of all of the stuff he finds with Seifer on his adventures, but the wind grabs it before he can, and drags it off, over the side of the rocks and toward the ocean. He frowns when he watches it drift away, and he glares at Seifer when the blonde starts to dust himself off and get to his feet, offering Squall a hand up.

"Come on, Squally. It's a dumb little letter." Squall pouts, and glares at Seifer's hand, but accepts it anyway, letting the taller boy help him to his feet. On his way up, he grabs a little shard from the broken bottle, and shoves it in his pocket, so he can use it for reference later tonight, because he still wants to see if he can paint that color. The color is a bit like Seifer's eyes, Squall realizes when he looks up at Seifer as they start walking back toward the orphanage, Seifer talking about lame adventures and love letters as they go. Squall isn't really paying attention, though, because he's wondering if maybe he could try painting Seifer's eyes again, like he did last time, now that he has the bottle shard to use as a reference, and he thinks the adventure really wasn't that much of a waste after all.


End file.
